Before extending an unsolicited offer of credit, such as for a credit card, to a current or prospective customer, a financial services institution typically completes a prescreen to assess the credit-worthiness of the customer. Although a financial services institution may rely solely on its own resources in completing a prescreen, almost all financial services institutions use one of three consumer credit reporting agencies—EQUIFAX®, EXPERIAN®, and TRANSUNION® consumer credit reporting agencies—in completing a prescreen. Each of these three agencies operates consumer credit databases with many products and scoring models. EQUIFAX® databases contain information on more than 400 million credit holders worldwide (about three-quarters of whom are consumers), EXPERIAN® databases store credit information on 215 million consumers in the United States, and TRANSUNION® databases maintain credit histories of more than 500 million people in nearly 35 countries. Credit scoring differs from one lender to another, and at least some of the differences between lenders often may be traced to differences between or within the three major consumer credit reporting agencies in the scoring models that each agency uses.
A financial services institution may need to provide a consumer credit reporting agency only simple customer-identifying information—such as one or more of a customer's name, address, social security number, and date of birth—in order for the consumer credit reporting agency to pull data on that customer and complete its portion of a prescreen. After obtaining a credit report on the customer from a consumer credit reporting agency (or before obtaining the credit report, if the financial services institution has the needed data), the financial services institution may apply pre-qualifying criteria for assessing whether to extend an unsolicited offer of credit to the customer. These criteria may include: a) no bankruptcies in the past seven years; b) no major credit derogatories in the last 24 months; c) no late mortgage payments in the last 12 to 24 months; and d) a middle FICO or Fair Isaac Corporation score greater than or equal to 630. Other various sets of these kinds or other kinds of pre-qualifying criteria may apply.
If the credit report and any pre-qualifying criteria indicate that the current or prospective customer has sufficient credit-worthiness, the financial services institution may extend an unsolicited firm offer of credit, such as for a credit card, to the customer. However, the customer may either refuse the firm offer of credit, or, if the customer accepts the firm offer of credit, minimally use the corresponding credit instrument. The customer may make any of several decisions in the period between (A) “Prescreen Initiation,” and (B) “Customer Receipt of Credit Instrument” that may lead the customer either to refuse the firm offer of credit, or, if the customer accepts the firm offer of credit, minimally to use the credit instrument. In particular, the financial services institution runs a risk of a losing a business opportunity in this period if this period is an extended one, e.g., measurable in terms of a day or more rather than seconds or minutes. As described herein further below, this disclosure provides systems and methods to mitigate this risk of losing business by providing real-time prescreening and, in some embodiments, nearly simultaneous offers of credit.